A portion of the asteroidal Sutter's Mill meteorite used in this study. (Credit: Image courtesy of Arizona State University)
Posted on 09/16/2013 8:05:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An important discovery has been made concerning the possible inventory of molecules available to the early Earth. Scientists led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor in ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, found that the Sutter's Mill meteorite, which exploded in a blazing fireball over California last year, contains organic molecules not previously found in any meteorites. These findings suggest a far greater availability of extraterrestrial organic molecules than previously thought possible, an inventory that could indeed have been important in molecular evolution and life itself...
"The analyses of meteorites never cease to surprise you ... and make you wonder," explains Pizzarello. "This is a meteorite whose organics had been found altered by heat and of little appeal for bio- or prebiotic chemistry, yet the very Solar System processes that lead to its alteration seem also to have brought about novel and complex molecules of definite prebiotic interest such as polyethers."
Pizzarello and her team hydrothermally treated fragments of the meteorite and then detected the compounds released by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The hydrothermal conditions of the experiments, which also mimic early Earth settings (a proximity to volcanic activity and impact craters), released a complex mixture of oxygen-rich compounds, the probable result of oxidative processes that occurred in the parent body. They include a variety of long chain linear and branched polyethers, whose number is quite bewildering.
This addition to the inventory of organic compounds produced in extraterrestrial environments furthers the discourse of whether their delivery to the early Earth by comets and meteorites might have aided the molecular evolution that preceded the origins of life.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
A portion of the asteroidal Sutter's Mill meteorite used in this study. (Credit: Image courtesy of Arizona State University)
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Are them long chain linear and branched polyethers the new 49ers in California, is this gonna be a polyether rush instead of a gold rush?
Trible poop?
Why would earth which is a great many times the size of the comet and replete with many thermal processes of its own in a element rich environment need the help of this dinky comet?
So I guess this means we arrived much the same was as Slim Pickens did?
Because these researchers need more grant$ to stay employed.
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